The new Overstock.com call center at Satsop Business Park was ushered in on May 10 with a high profile ribbon cutting ceremony featuring Gov. Jay Inslee.

The ceremony was held outside on a sunny day, a cooling tower for the nuclear plant that never was in the distance behind a large crowd of employees in red T-shirts.

In front, on a stage, was Gov. Jay Inslee and Grays Harbor County Commissioner Vickie Raines, preparing to speak to the employees and a large crowd of invited attendees which included Commissioner Randy Ross, mayors and Port of Grays Harbor commissioners and staff, and local business leaders.

“I’m excited that Overstock has recognized the talent we have in the State of Washington. I’m pleased at the vision we helped craft with them of seeing 150 families now having a good paycheck to help this company advance their cause,” Inslee said. “I’ve been interested in helping Grays Harbor for a long, long time, going back to the late 1980s when I was in the Legislature. We know we need to do a lot of things and we’ve got some really great things going on in the Harbor right now — the hotel at the Morck, the Gateway Center… I like the fact that we’re shipping American cars to Asia through Grays Harbor through our Port.”

“I’ll tell you how I think how good you are,” Inslee said to the employees. “I think if someone calls Overstock someday and says, ‘Look, I really want to buy two cooling towers that are 600 feet tall…’ If anybody can sell them and figure it out — we don’t really want to move them, we just want to keep them here.”

Commissioner Raines discussed the work that went into getting Overstock.com to Satsop Business Park and she welcomed the company.

“There were many sites that were potential locations for this company to plant itself, and we appreciate the Governor’s efforts working with Overstock.com to make sure it came to Grays Harbor,” Raines said. “That’s a wonderful thing for all of us.”

Carter Lee, Overstock.com senior vice president of information technology and people care, took a moment before speaking to take a selfie with the crowd. Inslee and Raines looked on in amusement.

“As you watch these buildings be built or rennovated — and I’ve done both — at first it’s like a house that’s just a house. But if you take a house and put a family in that house, it becomes a home,” Lee said. “And as I watch these buildings and us open them, they’re just buildings and there’s really nothing special about them until we bring our own family in and we hire or transplant and we train and develop people and it becomes a home.

“That’s the thing that I think is so special about this place. It was a building the last time I was here, but as I saw people in it today working, I now realize it is a home.”

Following the ceremony replete with oversized scissors and applause, a short tour of the facility was given. The call center looked like one would expect a call center to look — cubicles (with low walls), computers, and chairs. Whiteboards were throughout, as was the Overstock.com logo.

“It’s nothing sexy — it’s a call center,” said Mark Delcorp, Overstock.com manager of public relations.

The facility has hired 150 employees as it had announced it would when it signed a contract with the Port in December 2016. As of the ribbon cutting, the facility was fully staffed with two-thirds of those employees manning the call center, and the other third still in training.

Delcorps said Overstock.com looked to hire from a five-county area.

“We wanted to hire the best people to help our customers,” he said.

At the end of the tour were refreshments. Staff and the public enjoyed the refreshments together.